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BROAD STREET, 



PENN SQUARE, 



THE PARK. 




PHILADELPHIA : 
JNO. PBNINGTON & SON 
1871. 



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BROAD STREET, 



PENN SQUARE 






THE PARK. 




PHILADELPHIA : 

JNO. PENINGTON & SON. 
1871. 



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COLLINS, PKINTEB. 



BROAD STREET, PENN SQUARE, AND THE PARK. 



The National Capital has been called a city of magni- 
ficent distances, but it has no avenue which compares, in 
length, with the great wide street, which, beginning at 
the Delaware, where that river receives the waters of the 
Schuylkill, and running northward, again reaches that 
same noble stream, thirty-three miles, it is said, from the 
spot where it begins. This is a truly magnificent dis- 
tance. And if it be a fact that 

" Distance lends enchantment to the view," 

strangers who visit our city cannot fail to be charmed 
with the sight of our principal street. Unfortunately 
our efforts to adorn it have not been commensurate with 
its length. An Opera House, a Masonic Hall, two or 
three stone churches with vainly aspiring pinnacles, and 
the palace of the Union League, with the stars and stripes 
proudly waving from the top of a gigantic pole, stand 
like oases in a desert of inferior buildings. Vacant lots, 
the remains of departed coal yards, and the ashes of 
burned warehouses, contrast strangely with founderies and 
machine shops, the din of which testifies to the life and 
industry of our citizens. Evidently Philadelphia is not 
a finished city. 

For some years past the intersection of this avenue 
with Market Street has been the chief point of interest. 
What shall be done with so large a piece of unoccupied 
ground? While some of our citizens have generously 
desired to " donate^ corner lots to the various learned 



societies intrusted with the art, science, and literature of 
tlie city, others equally disinterested, have insisted upon 
using the centre of the square for new municipal build- 
ings. 

No person having any claim to good taste should think 
for a moment of crowding the point where two great 
streets cross each other. There, if anywhere, should be 
free space and open sky. The hint given by Penn in 
laying out the original city has been entirely neglected 
hi the plans for its extension. No other open space 
marks the intersection of the principal avenues, or breaks 
the uniformity of the long, straight streets. To cover 
with buildings the only one that we have would be an act 
of sheer barbarism. 

In the pictures of great masters there are parts of 
especial interest, and parts which are subordinate. So, 
also, in the works of great writers, in the plays of Shaks- 
peare, and in the novels and poems of Walter Scott; and 
the orator, who does not occasionally rise to flights of 
higher eloquence, has no influence on his audience. With- 
out contrast there is no efiect. This is unquestionably one 
of the first canons of art. Neither the painter, nor the 
poet, nor the orator who neglects it can ever rise above 
the dead level of mediocrity. Nor can a great city ever 
be a delight to the strangers who .visit it, or to the people 
who reside in it, if those to whom its improvements and 
embellishments are entrusted disregard this same law. 
It is not enough that a street should be wide and long. 
It must have points of greater interest, marked by a 
higher beauty. Especially, where it is met or crossed by 
other streets of unusual width, should increased spacious- 
ness be given, and objects of more than common elegance 
should arrest attention. The rectangular plan, which 
has been so rigidly adhered to in laying out Philadelphia, 
has given it a monotony that is detestable to foreigners, 
accustomed to see such matters directed by judgment and 



taste. Even tlie oblique roads, by which the old city 
was formerly entered, have evidently been looked upon 
as interferences with its symmetry and as blemishes on 
its beauty, to be hidden or made as little obtrusive as 
possible, while a people with higher ideas of art would 
have converted them into wide avenues, conducive both 
to the elegance and to the convenience of the city. 

Every year, many of our citizens visit Paris, to return 
filled with admiration of that splendid capital. And to 
that splendor nothing contributes more than the mag- 
nificent avenues which run in all directions and connect 
the dififerent quarters of the city. That great metropolis, 
originally built at hap-hazard, without any plan, a com- 
plicated and confused network of narrow, tortuous, and 
obstructed streets, has been rendered not only the most 
elegant but the most convenient city in the world, a 
triumph of engineering and of art. It is now easy to 
pass from one part of the city to another in a nearly 
straight line. The wide avenues are planted with trees, 
and where they intersect with each other, are opened 
into " places," great square or circular spaces embellished 
with columns, fountains, and statues. These are nearly 
as w^ell fitted for recreation, and are as attractive resorts 
as the parks, and, as every inhabitant can reach one of 
them by a few minutes' walk, they can be daily used by 
that part of the population who can spare time only on 
Sundays and holidays to visit the more distant parks in 
the environs of the city. Of these avenues and " places," 
the finest are those which connect the palace of the 
Tuileries, in the heart of the city, with the Bois de Bou- 
logne outside of the fortifications. This park is not to be 
compared with our own, either for extent or for the natu- 
ral beautj^ of its scenery, but the manner in which it is 
united with the Tuileries is an admirable illustration of 
how much may be done to adorn a great city when public 
improvements are guided by skill and taste, and furnishes 



an example which should be carefully studied in arranging 
the approaches to our own park. 

Adjoining the palace of the Tnileries is the garden, 
laid out in the reign of Louis XIV. in geometrical style 
by the celebrated landscape gardener Le Notre, and 
adorned with statues and fountains. This garden covers 
more than fifty acres of ground in the very centre of 
Paris. Beyond it is the Place de la Concorde, an im- 
mense open square, in the centre of which stands the 
obelisk of Luxor, a single block of red granite, sevent}'-- 
four feet high, brought from Egypt, and erected in the 
year 1836. On the right and left are fountains, shedding 
daily a million and a half gallons of water into basins 
fifty feet in diameter. From the Place de la Concorde a 
wide avenue, bordered with trees, leads straight to the 
bridge of Neuilly, nearly four miles distant from the 
Tuileries. It passes through the Champs Elysees, or 
Elysian Fields, the great central park of Paris. Beyond 
the Champs Elysees, this avenue again widens into a 
"Bond-point," or circular space, where several streets 
meet, and farther on is the Place de I'Etoile, in the centre 
of which stands the great Arc de Triomphe, spanning the 
avenue with an arch fifty feet wide and one hundred feet 
high in the clear. This splendid monument, the largest 
triumphal arch in the world, was designed by the architect, 
Chalgrin, and begun by Napoleon in the year 1806, but 
was not finished until the year 1836, in the reign of Louis 
Philippe, under the supervision of Huyot. Standing on 
one of the highest spots in Paris, it is visible at a great 
distance, and is one of the most striking objects in ap- 
proaching the city. From this point twelve wide streets 
diverge in different directions. One, styled Avenue de 
rimperatrice, leads directly to the Bois de Boulogne. 
This superb avenue is nearly a mile long and more than 
three hundred feet (100 metres) wide, divided into cen- 
tral and side streets, separated by trees and grass. 



We have no Louis Napoleon nor Baron Haussmann to 
tear down houses and open streets and squares, in order 
to remedy defects in the plan of our city, but a tasteful 
manjigeraent of avenues already made may do something 
to relieve the monotony of it. We cannot expect to 
rival at once the magnificence of a capital on which a 
nation has lavished its wealth for hundreds of years, but 
we may show that we appreciate the art that has adorned 
it. Already we have great avenues leading to the north 
and to the west, and to the Elysian Fields beyond Fair- 
mount. Are they forever to be mere highways for the 
exclusive use of mule teams and freight cars ? Or are 
they to be planted with trees, and made as attractive as 
those of Paris? Already, where Broad and Market 
streets cross each other, we have a Place de la Concorde. 
Shall we agree to block it up with buildings and so de- 
stroy it, or shall we agree to embellish and adorn it? 

The advantages of these open " places," in an art as 
well as in a sanitary point of view, are now recognized 
in every civilized city. Not only in Paris and other 
European capitals ; in our sister city of New York, Union 
Place has been reserved at the head of Broadway where 
it unites the Fourth Avenue, Fourteenth Street, and 
University Place. While other cities are buying pro- 
perty in order to make these open squares, is Philadel- 
phia now, in the 19th century, to close up her principal 
avenues and build upon the great central place, that has 
been reserved for nearly two hundred years ? Has her 
public school system done so little for the cultivation of 
her inhabitants that they are without any appreciation 
of the beautiful ? Are those to whom she intrusts her 
public improvements in benighted ignorance of the first 
principles of metropolitan aesthetics ? 

If then all pride in the city be not at an end, let every 
voice be raised to condemn the vandalism of shutting up 



8 

our principal avenues, and to forbid any encroachment on 
our Central Square. 

For more than half a century, Philadelphia has dreamed 
of the future magnificence of the two great avenues which 
cross in the heart of the city, but now at the very moment 
when the realization of the dream seems possible, a pro- 
ject is seriously entertained to barricade both streets and 
to destroy their beauty forever. With taste worthy of a 
country town, which plants its court-house right in the 
middle of the village green, this great metropolis and 
maritime port, as it delights to be called, proposes to move 
its court-house from the business part of the city, and 
plant it in the centre of the village green ; to shut up 
completely and forever the vista of the two widest streets, 
and to terminate the splendor of the dream with a hideous 
reality. 

While every ejBfort is being made to persuade the 
General Government that Philadelphia is the proper 
locality for its chief Naval Station, the advocates of the 
project for taking the courts to Penn Square endeavor to 
make it appear that the city is moving inland, and that 
business is leaving the Delaware front. Not so! The 
city is merely extending, as all cities must do, in trebling 
their population. Nor is the business of the city moving. 
It, too, is but extending, and in the only way that it can 
extend, by converting dwellings into offices and stores, or 
by tearing down and rebuilding. The business is now 
just where it was fifty years ago. The North America, 
the Philadelphia, the Farmers' and Mechanics', and other 
banks are still in the same blocks ; while more recently 
chartered institutions, such as the Fidelity, the First 
National, the Tradesmen's, and Corn Exchange Banks 
have located their offices to the eastward and not to the 
west. The Pennsylvania Railroad, although its terminus 
is in West Philadelphia, finds it more convenient to 
transact its financial business on the eastern side of the 



city, and the Reading and other railroads have their 
offices in the same neighborhood. The United States 
Treasurer had to be removed from the Mint to the Cus- 
tom House, so great was the inconvenience of having his 
office at a point so remote from the business centre of the 
city. 

What the movers of Philadelphia have accomplished 
may be seen at Dock and Second Streets. One of the 
most elegant marble structures in the country has been 
moved to a down-east town to make room for a brick 
barrack of truly marvellous ugliness. 

But while all new buildings for business purposes have 
been erected within a short distance of the Delaware 
River, those put up for ornament and recreation have 
sought a home on Broad Street. The Academy of Music 
is there, the Horticultural Hall is there, the Union 
League is there, the new Masonic Hall is there, the 
Academy of the Fine Arts will be there : while coal yards, 
railroads, and freight depots are taking their departure. 

When private individuals and the directors of corpora- 
tions, in the management of their own affiiirs, thus clearly 
show a unanimity of opinion as to which quarter of the 
city is the proper locality for work, and which for rest 
and enjoyment, there can be no doubt that it is a mistake 
for the municipality to put its offices at a distance from 
all other business. The experience of London proves it. 
The Government of England is at this moment erecting 
new buildings for that city. Courts, that for centuries 
have sat at Westminster near to the parks and to the 
kings, are now, for the convenience of the people, to be 
removed to the business part of the city. And, while 
Paris has been almost rebuilt within the last twenty-five 
years, the Palais de Justice still stands on the same spot 
where it stood nine hundred years ago. 

Centre Square is now entirely open ; the railings have 
been removed and the trees cut down. Everyone, there- 



10 

fore, has now an opportunity to see for himself how much 
the beauty of wide streets is increased by an open space 
at their intersection. The great Hall of the Masons is 
now for the first time to be seen to full advantage, and it 
is easy to imagine what kind of buildings private enter- 
prise will soon substitute for the others which now sur- 
round the square if it be kept open. It must soon become 
one of the most elegant spots in the world. 

If we desire to make of our city a great metropolis, to 
be visited and admired by strangers, a pride and a joy 
to ourselves, railroads and coal-cars must not always oc- 
cupy the middle and both ends of the town. If we ex- 
pect the General Government to remove the navy yard to 
League Island, we should remove our factories and foun- 
deries, our mills and machine-shops, to the same neighbor- 
hood, where their dirt and smoke can pollute neither the 
water that we drink nor the air that we breathe. 

If the great park, with which we have undertaken to 
adorn the city, is to be a place of general resort and to 
benefit all of our citizens, it must be brought within reach 
of all. It must be connected with Broad Street and with 
the centre of the city by as short a route as possible ; and 
the avenues which lead to it must be made elegant and 
attractive ; in short, must be made part of the park. 

'' Many persons," says the eloquent President of the 
Park Commission, " whose journeyings brought them to 
Philadelphia, came and went with no better notion of its 
topography than that it is built in the centre of a plain, 
having no greater irregularity of surface than an occa- 
sional mound of cobble-stones, and no rural surroundings 
besides scattered ranges of cattle-pens and lengthened 
stretches of cabbage-gardens. The extension of the Park 
has dispelled such allusions. For all who choose to pass 
its portals there are walks and drives, miles after miles in 
extent, which, leading through scenes of unsurpassed 
loveliness, conduct to the fairest and brightest prospects." 



11 

Yes, for all who clioose to pass its portals; but while its 
portals are obstructed by railroads and coal-cars, and are 
only to be reached by a long and tedious drive through 
dirty, narrow streets, 'mid founderies and factories, strang- 
ers have little inducement offered them to visit the spot 
which is to dispel their illusions. While the most conve- 
nient way to reach our Garden of Eden is to take the train 
for Eeading, Pittsburg, or New York, they are not likely 
to prolong their stay in our city, but will come and go 
with no other notions of its inhabitants than that they 
are a people without cultivation or taste, a hive swarmed 
solely for the purpose of spinning cotton and forging iron. 
And if police oflfices and criminal courts are to become 
the central ornaments of the city, they may be expected 
to conclude that our chief pride is, that it is not without 
the vices of a metropolis. 

It will be seen, by looking at a map of the city, that if 
a straight line be drawn from the north side of Penn Square 
to a point a few yards to the eastward of the end of the 
Girard Avenue Bridge, about one-half of this line lies in 
the track of the Pennsylvania Avenue or Willow Street 
branch of the Reading Railroad. Broad, Green, and 
Spring Garden Streets are all crossed at grade by this 
road, and as it forms the eastern boundary of the Park, 
from the waterworks to Thompson Street, the gateways 
that give access to the south end, on the left bank of the 
Schuylkill, have this nuisance right in front of them. It 
is thus not only a source of danger to vehicles and pedes- 
trians, but it is a serious obstruction to the formation of a 
fine entrance to the Park at the point nearest to the cen- 
tre of the city. And as that is the part of the Park which 
must ever be most used by pedestrians and children, its 
entrance should be entirely free from the dangers incident 
to railroads on which steam is used. 

The removal of the rails from Broad Street to the Co- 
lumbia Bridge furnishes not only the shortest and most 



12 

direct route from our future Place de l«a Concorde to the 
Park, but it converts the track into a wide avenue on its 
boundary, and forms a drive in nearly a straight line 
through the East Park to Belmont, on the west side of 
the Schuylkill, crossing that river at the Columbia Bridge, 
and thus " relieving the Girard Avenue Bridge from a 
portion of the travel by which it is sometimes inconveni- 
ently crowded." 

No doubt we shall be told that this branch of the Read- 
ing Railroad is required by the large manufacturing es- 
tablishments located in its neighborhood. In reply to 
this we ask, will such establishments remain in this lo- 
cality forever? Their removal is merely a question of 
time, a question that may be safely left to the decision of 
the owners of the property. With Penn Square open, 
and Broad Street lined with fine buildings, all property 
between the Square and Park will be so much increased 
in value, that manufacturers will find that it is their in- 
terest to remove to the suburbs. For the present, Cal- 
lowhill Street, by widening it and Twenty-fifth Street, may 
be made to give almost a direct connection both with the 
east and west sides of the Park. Eventually, both it and 
Pennsylvania Avenue must become two of the most im- 
portant streets of the city. 

Trees on Broad Street and on the other avenues lead- 
ing to the Park, should be planted, not according to the 
caprice of individuals, but at regular intervals, and under 
the superintendence of the Park Commissioners. Fine 
forest trees are not to be grown within ten or a dozen feet 
of each other, or very near to high buildings, but must 
have room to spread their branches, if they are ever to be or- 
naments to an avenue. Above all must they be protected, 
with sedulous care, from the hands of that class of empiri- 
cal arboriculturists w4io annually infest our streets, armed 
with saws, with which they amputate the limlis of noble 



13 

trees, leaving nought but headless trunks to cumber the 
sidewalks. In vain these trunks 

Put forth 
The tender leaves of hope ; 

they never again can become trees. " The grand and 
graceful arboreous avenues which the careful nurture of 
centuries has secured to European capitals," were not 
made by any such system of pruning. 

In these routes to the Park, four places suggest them- 
selves as points that should be marked by monuments, or 
more than ordinarily ornamental features. The first and 
most important point is the intersection of Broad and 
Market Streets. Penn Square should be thrown open to 
the streets. In the centre of the Place should be erected 
a bronze statue of Washington, for which the Cincinnati 
Society already have nearly enough funds, or some other 
monument, large enough to be seen at some distance, but 
not so large as to interfere with the vista of the streets. 
With fountains of elegant design in the corners, to cool 
the air in summer, statues, and abundance of handsome 
lamps to light it at night, this spot might be made, at 
small expense, as elegant and as attractive as the Place 
de la Concorde at Paris. " The importance of large open 
spaces in great cities," says Mr. McMichael, in the report 
before quoted, " as means of health and enjoyment to the 
inhabitants, is too obvious to need comment. Their 
value, as sources of attraction to strangers, is equally ap- 
parent." Here, then, we have a large open space, right 
in the centre of the city, waiting to be made " a source of 
attraction to strangers." It may, very properly, be 
adorned with fine buildings, but they should be erected 
around it, and not in it. 

The next point of interest is Broad Street, where it is 
met by Pennsylvania Avenue and Callowhill Street, be- 
tween which some monument or fountain should be 



14 

placed ; widening Broad Street on the western side to ob- 
tain space for it, and rounding the corners of the block 
into the two streets leading respectively to the east and 
west sides of the Park. 

Again, where Pennsylvania Avenue crosses Twenty- 
first Street, there should be a " Rond-Point" or circular 
space, from which the streets should diverge in straight 
lines, instead of following the curvature of the railroad. 

The high ground, near to the east end of the Girard 
Avenue Bridge, is another spot that should be marked by 
some tall column, or other ornamental feature, open to 
and visible from the three avenues which meet near this 
point. Supposing steam to be the power used when no 
water is going over the dam, a fountain on the largest scale 
could here be maintained at the cost of pumping only. 
There would be no waste, as all the water used for the 
fountain would run back into the pool. 

Located as our Park is, in the neighborhood of, rather 
than 171 the city, its principal use now is to preserve the 
purity of the Schuylkill water, and to furnish an agree- 
able afternoon drive. To be a benefit to all, as a place 
for frequent recreation, it must, we repeat, be brought 
within the reach of all. It is to be hoped, therefore, that 
all will see the necessity of uniting it with Penn Square 
by the shortest possible route, and of making Broad 
Street, and the other avenues leading to it, in reality part 
of it. Broad Street should be planted from end to end, 
and the whole of it made a park, daily accessible to those 
who Jive in closely built streets and densely crowded 
houses, but whose distance from Fairmount prevents 
them from visiting it, except on holidays. 

To know what you have to do, and to do it, says Mr. 
Ruskin, is the great principle of success in every depart- 
ment of human effort, failure being more often attribu- 
table to a confused understanding of the thing to be done 



15 

than to an inability to do it. In the adornment of our 
city, then, let us bear in mind the necessity of a clear 
understanding of the thing to be done, in order that we 
may avoid doing anything that may hereafter have to be 
undone. The improvement of the approaches to the 
Park should be confided to a permanent commission, for 
it is only in such a body that a knowledge of the thing 
to be done can be coupled with an ability to do it. Such 
a board we already have in the Park Commissioners, and 
to them should be intrusted the improvement of the 
streets above mentioned. Especially Penn Square and 
Broad Street, at least from Washington Street to Girard 
Avenue, should be put under their control, to be planted 
with trees at regular intervals, so that we may even- 
tually, at some future day, have the arboreous avenues 
similar to those which, as Mr. McMichael tells us, orna- 
ment so many of the European capitals. 

Having endeavored to show the advantage of keeping 
Penn Square open, and the possibility of making it the 
rival of one of the most celebrated squares of Europe, 
we will conclude with a suggestion for a central embel- 
lishment. 

The centennial anniversary of the most important 
event in the history of America is now approaching, an 
event of which Philadelphia was the scene, and which 
Philadelphia should commemorate by a monument of 
bronze. What more fitting ornament for the centre of 
the great square in the heart of the city ? What more 
propitious moment for its inauguration than the Fourth 
of July, 1876? Such a monument should be not only 
commemorative of our history, but illustrative of the 
present state of our art and of our industry. Its erec- 
tion, then, must not be intrusted to men who proclaim 
that there is, in our city, no ability to erect anything 
but steam-engines. If architects and sculptors be not 



16 

already driven from among us, to find more liberal pa- 
trons and more congenial homes, let not its design be 
sought in Italy, that graveyard of art; nor, while claim- 
ing a pre-eminence of skill for our founders and metal- 
workers, should we go to Bavaria for a casting to be 
erected in their midst. 



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